If someone says, To be enlightened you
must
fast and pray all night,
Have dinner and go to bed.

If you see a sign, This way to
salvation,
run the other way.

If someone says, "This book is the
truth,
you can buy it from me,"
Take your money and buy grapes and roses.

If someone says, "Hes talking
tonight,
thousands will be saved,"
Go for a walk listen to the birds
and watch the clouds, and leave
your backpack, your Bible and your Buddha
under a tree and hope
they will be gone when you return.

Where we are going you can't carry anything,
not even your name.

- John Squadra

Listen to your life. See it for the
fathomless mystery that it is. In the
boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and
gladness:
touch, taste, smell your way into the holy and hidden heart of
it,
because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and
life itself
is grace.

- Frederick Buechner

photo by Alan Larus

Mysteriously they entered, those few
minutes.
Mysteriously, they left.
As if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart,
who is always sleepless, suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large, not so much as that,
only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of blue mountains,
I drank from the stream. Tossed in a small stone from the bank.
Whatever direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss nor danger.
The dogs tail wagged a little in his dream.

- Jane Hirshfield

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses.
That is why we get a
heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a
master and
recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled
because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own
criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet,
when he
becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering
profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no
mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation,
all kings,
all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to
discover what
is already there.

- Henry Miller

As soon as the non-dual language becomes a
strategy to manipulate, to
try and get away from something, it has become something else. It
is no
longer on behalf of Truth. Content is nothing. The words are
nothing
without the Love they spring from. Love has no formulas. It can
say
anything or nothing, a little smile. It is not about the words.

- Ramana Spencer

You made me without name or trace, like the
heart and soul.
And You made me hand-clapping without hands, like joy.
I said, "Where am I going, since my soul is in no
place?"
You made me without "place"
and moving like the spirit.

- Rumi

We are, what are we?

By Sachal Sarmast
(1739 - 1829)

We are, what are we?
We know not, what we are!
For a moment we are blessed
For a moment we are accursed
Some moment we pray and fast
Some moment we are free spirits
Now we declare, 'Only we exist'
Now we declare, 'We don't exist'
For a bit, our heart is calm
In a bit, we weep rivers
Now we say, 'We are self-realized'
Now we ask, 'Who are we?'
'Sachal' we are only That eternally
What other contracts can we make here?